Hello Readers! Happy Monday! I hope this post finds who ever is reading this had a great weekend!
Today I am writing a follow up post to my blog on Farmworkers & the fair food program. This weekend I went down to sunny St. Petersburg, Florida to stand strong and ally with the Coalition of Immokale Workers to show both Wendy’s & Publix that we want fair food.
Now if you don’t know what I mean by fair food then I will link my previous post so you can get a better understand of it all.
I took a caravan from DC to Florida with other college students and community members who came down to support. First the bus picked up students from New Jersey at Rutgers then it picked up people from Philly and then DC. I met a lot of awesome people from Rutgers and besides our bus being a little hot on the way there it was awesome. It took us about 18 hours to get there and the whole bus was full.
During our caravan we sang songs on guitar, made Wendy’s signs to post on social media & even came together to create a new person combining all the stories of the people around us.
When we got to Florida we had dinner at Ekort College with some of the farmworkers and Student Farmworker Allience were we where staying the night. It was delicious. Then a bunch of us went to the beach on campus which was beautiful.
In the morning after we all woke up we went and had breakfast. Some of the local church ladies who support the CIW made us breakfast burritos which were delicious. After breakfast we were on our way to the Parade.
Due to the fact that I’m just a clutz I ended up injuring my feet the night before at the beach and couldn’t walk. So I ended up in a van with 7 other people and we followed the March from behind. All though I couldn’t walk with everyone my spirit was still there and in solidarity.
During the March there had to be over 1,500 people marching from all over the country which was awesome. The power of the people! Gladly the March went on for three miles & limited interuptions from the police. We stopped at both Wendy’s & Publix two of the companies who have not signed on to the fair food agreement yet. After the March it was time for the concert. First we had a great skit put on of how the CIW got started. Then we heard from the musical stylings of Ruby Velle & the Soulphonics out of Georgia which is a pretty great group female led.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8wcyxAnQF0A&feature=youtu.be
After we had some words from the Farmworkers & then LA Santa Cecilia which was a Mexican pop/rock band full of energy also female led with very colorful bold outfit choices.
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152763002632896
Once they were done all the Student Farmworker Allience organizers got on stage and told a very important anoncement. The protest people had already been doing together in trying to get Wendy’s off their campus & out of their communities has now escalated into a full on boycott of Wendy’s!
The last act of the night was Ozomatli a band out of LA which have been going 15 years strong and have aways been socially aware. They were a very diverse upbeat band kind of reminding me of the band Flobots.
After a long day of marching & dancing we all loaded onto our bus and went the 18 hours back home. We were tired but excited to see what’s next.
http://ciw-online.org/blog/2015/03/bouncing-by-the-bay/
Stay Tuned to the CIW website & social media for more from this historic Parade & Concert for Fair Food! 🍅
Till Next Time, “Up Up with the Fairfoodnation!” 🍇
The Life & Times of Ice 